The Time to Make it Shorter

By Sara Frizzell

In just
over an hour last Saturday night, four Canadian short
story writers tackled some big literary questions. What draws us to the short
story and how do we define it? Steered
by CBC's Sandra Abma, Mark Anthony Jarman, Steven
Hayward, Heather O'Neill and Guy Vanderhaeghe gave brief readings then got into
dissecting the art form.

Steven read from the introduction to his
collection which tried to explain the particular pull he felt to write short
fiction. He likened it to the temptation of a bacon breakfast sandwich, because
just like his doctor told him to avoid the sandwich, his publisher suggested he
avoid the short story if he wanted to live. For there is no future in the short
story and certainly no money, but still authors succumb.

The evening was full of tidbits for
aspiring short story writers, including how to pick the right section to read
at an event, how to know when you’ve finished a short story, and what makes a
group of short stories a collection. Good short story collections often have a
thread that ties the stories together. Mark’s first version of his new
collection, Knife Party at Hotel Europa,
contained stories that were not part of the Italian theme, which were then taken out
and replaced by others to flesh out the concept. Heather’s collection Daydreams of Angelsis less gritty
than her novels, and explores origin stories and fables mixed with her own
family’s lore. It’s this room for experimentation that is
part of the thrill. A good short story does not drag the reptilian tail of the
novel it could have been behind it, but short fiction can be a playground. For
example, the voice in one of the short stories included in Steven’s collection,
To Dance the Beginning of the World,
became the central character in his novel Don’t
Be Afraid. For Heather, her novels were set across the
street from each other on the corner of Sainte-Catherine and Saint-Laurent in
Montreal, while her short stories are sometimes fanciful and now she says she
has found the confidence to write a historical novel.

Writers don’t have to agonize over short
fiction in the same way as a novel before getting into the writing. Guy said this
means he doesn’t have to ask himself: is this the short story for me? Instead, he can
just try it out. For him, short stories start with a voice and a good story is
always channeled through one consciousness. Often for him that means a first person narrative, his
understanding perhaps stemming from his first experiences with stories told by
his father around the kitchen table. This understanding growing as he read in the Western
tradition, which holds an epiphany moment in the final lines when the emotional
impact sets in.

So how do you know when you’ve written a good
short story? When you are sick of it. When you feel that if you tinker any more you
are going to break it. When it is better than the last story you wrote. According
to Guy, stories are like parallel parking. At some point you just need to say, that’s
good enough.

It’s false to say there is such a thing as
short story perfection. The authors attest that they are always revising, even as
they read aloud at such events as the Ottawa Writers Festival. But for readers
there is something nearly perfect about the promise short fiction offers, the promise of not
being interrupted. Good fiction is like a dream from which you do not want to wake
up.